“Nah. I like to eat too much to want to know all that goes on behind the scenes.”
“You should come over to Julienne sometime and check it out,” he says. “I’ll make you all my specialties. Filet mignon or seared tuna, roasted scallops, strawberry tart. You’ll enjoy it.”
“I will. I’m sure my husband would too.”
I don’t know why I said that. I wear a wedding ring, which I’m sure Tyler has seen considering the number of times he’s looked at my hands while I’ve chopped and diced and whisked.
We stop beside my car. He smiles again. In the light of the streetlamps, his smile is still gleaming white. He’s close enough that I can smell the scents of parmesan and chives clinging to his chef’s jacket.
“How long have you been married?” he asks.
“Three years.” I open the trunk so we can put my stuff inside. “Together five.”
“Hmm.” He puts my container-encased soufflé in the trunk. “Guess it worked out for you, huh?”
“I guess so.”
I guess so? What the hell kind of answer is that?
I toss my satchel into the backseat. “Well, yeah. Of course it worked out. We’re very happy.”
“Good for you.” He slams the trunk and rests his hands on top of it as he looks at me. “Not many people are happily married these days.”
“Dean and I are.”
Why do I sound defensive?
I open the driver’s side door. “Thanks for walking me out here, Tyler. See you next week.”
“Sure, Liv. Bye.”
When I glance in the rearview mirror as I drive away, I see him standing there watching me.
Thoughts of my childhood appear to me in flashes, like cards shuffling. I try not to dwell on it, especially memories of my mother. Tonight, though, I have a dream about a boy I once knew.
My mother and I spent the summer in a beachside community in North Carolina. She’d hooked up with a man she met at a gas station and was supposedly cleaning his house in exchange for room and board.
This time, at least, we had our “own” place, since the guy let us stay in a room above his garage. It was small and hot, but there was a kitchenette with a fridge, and if you craned your neck while looking out the window you could see a pale strip of ocean in the distance.
The man—whose name I can’t remember—had a son a few months older than I. Trevor Hart. We’d have been in the same class if school were in session, but since it was summer we had nothing to do. He was a skinny, towheaded kid with bright blue eyes, freckles, and an utter determination to be my friend.
By the time I was nine, I’d learned to keep my distance from people, learned not to make friends too fast because chances were we’d be moving again soon.
But Trevor and his boundless enthusiasm were hard to resist. Plus I had no one except my mother, and when I was with her it was all about what she wanted, what she needed, what she had to do.
To get away from that for a while, I warily started hanging out with Trevor. The second week we were there, he hauled one of his old bikes from a shed and asked me to ride with him to the beach.
“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” I said, eyeing the rusted two-wheeler dubiously.
“Oh.” He scratched his head. “Guess you’d better learn.”
Every day for a week, that kid held the bike while I tottered to and fro, trying to learn how to balance. Every time I fell, he picked up the bike and asked if I was okay. Every time I pedaled, he cheered.
And when I finally managed to bike the length of an entire street, he ran alongside me the whole way, yelling, “You got it, Liv! You’re riding a bike! You’re doing it!”
We were inseparable for the rest of the summer. We spent most of our time biking to the beach where we played putt-putt, ate ice cream, and swam in the ocean.
Trevor Hart had plans. He wanted to be a firefighter, a paleontologist, a police officer, a construction worker, a deliveryman. He wanted to parachute jump, go to India, fly a plane, swim with sharks, climb Mount Everest.
He was the first person who asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
“You gotta be something,” he said, licking up a drop of melting ice cream from his cone. “What about a skydiver?”
“I don’t think I’d like that.”
“I saw this program about a circus college where people go to learn trapezing and tightrope-walking and stuff. You could do that.”
I was pretty sure I couldn’t, but I loved that he thought I could.
“Maybe I could be a clown,” I suggested. That actually sounded kind of fun.
“Yeah!” His eyes lit with enthusiasm. “That’d be totally awesome. You could have pink hair and drive one of those tiny cars. You’d be great at that.”
“You think?” I smiled, pleased. “Thanks.”
“You gotta tell me when the shows are, though,” he said, “cuz you never know, I might be at Everest base camp or something.”
I’d little doubt he would be.